Perspectives

You know those days when you seem to be floating between reality and unreality? When the spinning in your head outweigh the reality of gravity and the day's events?

I had one of those days recently. I turned on to a one way street the wrong way, and my children didn't even notice, nor did I. And then the cars coming at me kept moving over into the other lane and it felt all wrong. In China we always drive on the side of the road that is convenient so it took me a minute to realize my gross misjudgment.

In the middle of this day, I looked up at the mountain. It's close, I can see it out my window, it's 3,000 feet higher than my 5,000 and  it is almost always covered with snow. But it doesn't seem 3,000 feet high. It just barely skims the top of my 6 ft. fence, and in my defense, I do understand perspective. This mountain is barely a couple of miles away...and yet it is snowing up there, and not down here, it is covered with snow, and here the snow comes and goes, melts or is blown away.

My life is full of these little perspective anomalies, my oldest child is almost as tall as me, and without any of the maturity it takes to be that tall. He is still so young and naive and did I mention young.

I am in my home town and desperately home sick for my not-home-towns, all of them, any of them, except for Laramie, Wyoming or Columbia, S. Carolina (Can anyone be home sick for Columbia, S. Carolina?) But Moscow, Seoul, Taiyuan...and even Yangqu (pronounce it like it looks and you'll get an idea of the kind of place it is).

And then suddenly the never-ending Winter, which to me always feels never-ending suddenly became Spring and the kids played outside all day, and even reminded me they should use sunscreen.

And before anyone was awake I turned on the computer, waiting for some personal joy and instead I'm smacked in the face by cars floating into airports and bridges and buildings collapsing and burning, and not all that far from where my sister lives in Japan. And there is more of that sadness and chaos that only comes with disaster. Disaster in the biggest, Universal sense of the word. And death and burning and so much clean up that it boggles the mind to imagine.

And then another overwhelmingly emotional letter: We have a new family member, she is four years old and as cute as a button, and from the most beautiful province in China, or so they say! We hope to be able to travel to get her sometime around the beginning of summer, but we shall see! We don't have much to say about her, but that she looks loved and well-cared for which is such a relief and she looks tall--I could be wrong, but she was not a little petite Southern Chinese baby, at least from her two year old measurements. That's okay, she'll fit right in! Our name for her right now is Amelia Rain...but it's still in the negotiation process:)


And that's my upside down day. (I think Amelia might have righted it!)